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本文是一篇英语语法论文，本研究将英语话题转换标记置于语法化理论的视域下考察，呈现三者的历史发展路径并揭示其动因机制，不仅深化和拓展了话语标记语研究，也补充了语法化和英语话题转换标记相结合的历时研究，同时为英语学习者对英语话题转换标记的准确理解和词典编纂提供指导。

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background

As a common linguistic phenomenon,discourse markers(hereafter,DMs)arewords or structures that play a pragmatic role in discourse,such as the italicized itemsin the following sentences.

(1)a.John can’t go.And Mary can’t go either.(Elaborative DM)

b.A:Harry is hurrying.B:But when do you think he will get here?(Contrastive DM)

c.Sue isn’t here.As a result,we won’t be able to see the video.(InferentialDM)(Fraser,2009b:296)

In the above examples,and,but and as a result are classified as different types ofDMs in virtue of their pragmatic function.They fail to convey new propositionalcontent to utterance,but rather help guide the comprehension of utterance(Fraser,2009b).During the past forty years,DMs have been the classic topic in the linguisticresearch,with dozens of articles appearing yearly.Scholars at home and abroad mainlydepicted the special linguistic phenomenon in detail from syntactic,semantic andpragmatic perspectives.

As an active type of DMs,topic change markers(hereafter,TCMs)play a criticalrole in topic orientation between two discourse segments.Reviewing the previousstudies of TCMs,the author discovers that there are many synchronic studies onEnglish TCMs,such as Croucher(2004),Fraser(2009a),Kim(2018),etc.As for thediachronic study on TCMs,there emerged works on Chinese,French TCMs only.Thediachronic study of English TCMs has not been given much attention.

1.2 Research Purpose

On the basis of the authentic and exhaustive data collected from OED,COHA andEEBO,this thesis intends to elaborate on the historical development of English TCMsin terms of syntactic and semantic features within the framework ofgrammaticalization.

In addition,this thesis aims to discuss the mechanisms behind historical changesof these English TCMs.Finally,this study attempts to summarize the common andprominent characteristics in the grammaticalization of English TCMs.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Related Studies of Topic Change Markers

This section aims to review domestic and international studies on TCMs atsynchronic level,mainly from three aspects.First of all,it summarizes the definitionand features of such markers in previous studies.Secondly,section 2.1.2 will introducerelevant studies conducted from syntactic and semantic perspectives.Finally,section2.1.3,will present some comparative studies on TCMs conducted by different scholarsfrom the synchronic perspective.

2.1.1 Synchronic Studies of Topic Change Markers

2.1.1.1 The Definition and Features of Topic Change Marker

Many definitions and labels of DMs have appeared in the academic literature,depending on the research theories and methods,such as cue phrases(Knott&Dale,1994),discourse operators(Redeker,1991),discourse particles(Schourup,1985;Kolyaseva,2021),discourse connectives(Blakemore,1992),pragmatic markers(Briton,2017;Fraser,1996),discourse markers(Blakemore,2002;Fraser,2009b;Schiffrin,1987)and so on.

Quirk was the first one to mention DMs in a lecture,and he believed that DMs arelanguage本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。